From the wtf fie:
Fiat and Chrysler to Build Jeeps in Italy - And Export Them to the US

There were rumors of this last week, but I guess now it's offical because it's in the Automotive News. Fiat and Chrysler are going to jointly invest $1.3 billion into a plant in Italy to make vehicles under the Jeep and Alfa Romeo brands. The upgraded facility would have a capacity of up to 280,000 vehicles per year and will employ up to 5,600 workers. In other words, it's a big factory. Some of the production will be assigned to Jeep models to be exported to the US.

It's interesting to me that this press release came out over Thanksgiving weekend. It appears that the UAW hasn't had time yet to react in an organized way to the press release. Personally, I have a hard time with this, since Fiat stands to get a third of Chrysler without investing any money. The whole purpose of the deal is to save jobs and industry in the US. Chrysler's reinvestment in North American built products is not complete, yet capital is somehow available to build cars in Italy.

Leslie Nielsen Dead at 84

Thanks for the comedy, Leslie.

The Thief that's Stealing your Processor Cycles

Windows 7's wmpnetwk.exe

I spent most of my morning today trying to wrestle Windows 7 back to reasonable performance. My performance meter showed the processor was working hard all the time. Also, over time startup performance has deteriorated, shutting down, going to sleep and waking up became slow and iffy propositions.

When I looked into it, it soon became clear that my year old Windows 7 laptop had two major problems. The first had to do with ill-behaved drivers for my HP-8500 series printer. Setting the drivers to not install at start-up seemed to solve that problem.

The second problem was more invidious and more difficult to solve. In fact, I still don't have it solved. It involves Microsoft Media Player. More particularly, a "service" file in the Windows registry called wmpnetwk.exe. According to my research, this program allows your PC to share media files over a network. You know, like the guy on the Windows commercial who carries his laptop all over the house. Apparently, it has been common knowledge for years that for this marginal bit of utility, this program can take half or more of your processor cycles all of the time. A Google search returned over 48,000 hits for this search

problem wmpnetwk.exe windows-7

Like Hal-2000, this program refuses to just let you turn it off. You can go to the resource monitor and try to turn it off all day long and it refuses to budge. I got it turned off through the Task Manager. Windows 7 has a built-in utility player called services.msc. With that program, you are supposed to be able to set the various service programs to automatic, automatic (delayed start), manual, or disabled. I used services.msc to return wmpnetwk.exe to "manual", restarted, and low and behold, the freaking program ignored my instructions and started automatically again.

I still don't have the problem completely solved. I know now though that if my process meter shows 55% of the cycles used when I'm not doing anything, I need to go to task manager and disable wmpnetwk.exe. I also know that if I do that, I'm unlikely to suffer any ill consequences. That's better than nothing. I hope that Microsoft has a service pack for Windows 7 on the way that will resolve this issue. So far Microsoft's response is bringing truth to the proverb, "once you go mac, you don't go back."

Here's a very relevant video I found on Youtube.

Take a Pass on the American Express PASS card

American Express has been heavily promoting its PASS reloadable debit card. It's a card aimed at teenagers. American Express sent me a mailer with what looked at first glance to be an attractive offer. Here's the pitch, sign up for an American Express PASS debit card for your teen, load it with at least $25.00, and when you reload the card, you'll get a free $25.00 credit with their promotion code getpass25. What's the catch? The most obvious one is the $3.95/month fee, but the fee is suspended until October 1, 2011, and you can cancel before the fee kicks in. Another catch is the $1.50 ATM withdrawal fee, but that's livable. The dealbreaker for me involved privacy. In the application,they want your teen's name and date of birth. They also want the teen's cell phone number and the express permission for American Express and its affiliates to send text messages whenever they want. They want the parent's date of birth, social security number and cell phone number.

In other words, this is a card where the company is making a $25.00 bet that you're too busy or stupid to cancel the card before next October. In the meantime they are likely to cost you money with text messages; and who knows to whom they'll sell (or barter) your and your child's personal information. There's no such thing as a free lunch. My family's privacy is worth more than $25.00.

Now for the marginally relevant video of the day. The subject is PASS. The video is This Too Shall Pass by Ok Go. I've always loved Rube Goldberg Machines, and this is the best one I've ever seen.

We might as well make this a "Dramatic Reading" Theme Day

And They Say the Art of Writing Letters is Dead . . .

If you've ever seen a Ken Burns documentary, two things stand out: the first is the cinematic style of zooming around the image of a still photograph, and the second is the lost art of letterwriting, as a famous actor reads a well-written and heartfelt missive. (I just wanted to use the word "missive".)

Well, Buckos and Buckets, letter writing isn't dead. Here's a letter from the Civil War, the famous Sullivan Ballou letter.

Okay, that's a pretty high bar when it comes to the art of correspondence. Now let's see what a modern writer can do with all the technology of the modern day.

More Senior Citizens "Dying with Debt" - USATODAY

Per a recent article in USATODAY, more senior citizens are deciding not to pay off their credit cards - ever. The plan is to die owing the money. This is not a new strategy. I have been advising some clients this strategy for years. The strategy only makes sense because the credit policies of giant creditors don't. To give an 80 year old a large credit line based on a simple FICO score completely ignores a substantial possibility that he or she may not have the incentive or ability to pay off a multi-thousand dollar unsecured credit line before his/her natural life expectancy ends. If this seems harsh, or even unethical, consider what has been the alternative. Many of these same seniors have been talked into disastrous home equity loans, equity stripping loans, that they can't afford, just to pay off credit cards. Clearly, the lesser of two evils is to pay what they can on their credit cards, even if it is the minimum payment or less. If the senior citizen leaves an insolvent estate, then the creditor should have thought about that before granting the credit.

Obama and Biden Go to Kokomo
Plus - an update on the Tipton transmission plant

It must be Take Your Vice President to Work Day. It's slightly after noon, and as I write this, President Obama and Vice President Biden are likely on their way to a rare joint appearance at a Chrysler Transmission plant in Kokomo, Indiana. Sharing the bill with them will be Chrysler Group CEO, Sergio Marchionne and UAW President, Bob King. They are basically taking a victory tour of Chrysler post-bailout. While Chrysler is not completely out of the woods, I've got to say that I'm amazed at how smoothly Chrysler's revamping of its existing product lines has gone so far. I guess that goes to show just what you can do when you actually pay your suppliers.

Even though Kokomo has no final assembly plants, Kokomo might be the more economically dependent on Chrysler than any other town in the country. Chrysler employs 4,500 workers in this city of 48,000. There is no question that the auto bailout saved the city from economic ruin.

The President is on hand for the expected announcement of roughly $1 billion in upgrades to the existing Kokomo transmission facilities. The Kokomo plants are expected to be reconfigured to produce an advanced automatic transmission for front-wheel-drive vehicles. The current product line focuses on trucks and rear-wheel-drive cars. A few years ago, old-Chrysler partnered with German firm Getrag to build a brand new plant in nearby Tipton, Indiana to produce advanced dual-clutch automatic transmissions. If things had gone as planned, those transmissions would be in Chrysler vehicles today. With the help of government incentives, the plant was completed, at least externally, but no production equipment was installed. There was an ongoing dispute between Chrysler and Getrag regarding who was supposed to pay for the equipment. From the perspective of this outsider anyway, it appears that neither Chrysler nor Getrag wanted a partner, they were both looking for a sugar daddy. By 2008 both companies had backed out of the deal, each throwing stones at the other. Within months, both companies would be bankrupt. At last report, the Tipton factory was sitting vacant, owned by a constellation of unpaid contractors. There was pending deal to sell the facility to Abound Solar, for the purposes of making solar panels. This deal was on hold as of November 19, 2010 due to a slight problem, no money had shown up.

Anyway, what a treat to have both the President and Vice President come to your plant on a work day. There are some who will say it's risky having both the President and the Vice President making a joint appearance. I can't say that I didn't think of the risk. Then I realized, out of the finite universe of individuals who would wish harm on the President and Vice President and try to carry it out, how many of them do you think would actually prefer Nancy Pelosi?

Sing us out, Kermit.

Netflix Raises Prices $1.00/month
More Bucks for More Crap, But Interesting Crap

Netflix Raises Prices $1.00/month. Not much of a headline, I know. The only reason I post it is that I'm watching Netflix as I watch this. Netflix's streaming service has a reputation of having a lot of crap. It does, but some of it is interesting anyway. I'm watching a documentary, Who is Harry Nilsson. What a strange dude. He brought in a busload of pensioners to record a song, I'd rather be dead than wet my bed. To prove you can find anything on youtube, here's the song from an earlier documentary called Did Somebody Drop his Mouse?

The Fraud at Bank of America Keeps on Coming
Countrywide Held on to Notes it Should Have Transferred.

According to an article in American Banker (subscription required, so I'm linking to Max Gardner's blog entry discussing it), a Countrywide Finance employee testified that Countrywide (since taken over by Bank of America) would routinely hold on to mortgage backed notes that were supposed to have been transferred in loan securitizations. In my post of November 16, I talked about how proper transfer of the note is crucial in a foreclosure case. If the borrower pays somebody other than the holder of the note, the borrower may be liable to pay twice. This danger is compounded in mortgage securitizations. Unless the notes (endorsed in blank) are transferred to the trustee of the mortgage security, the same loans could be bundled into multiples of mortgage securities. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if this practice is widespread, confidence in mortgage securities could plummet.

It's clear to me that the corporate culture of dishonesty that permeated Countrywide has infected Bank of America to the core. It's time for Bank of America to be placed under receivership. Interestingly, the loan in question in this case was subject to a lost note affidavit in a previous proceeding. All of a sudden the note showed up again. That brings us to our marginally relevant video of the day, Baby, Now that I've Found You (I can't let you go) by the Foundations. What I found is interesting about this song is that almost everybody is familiar with the Foundations' other hit, Build Me Up Buttercup, and they forget about this song even though this was a top 10 hit in the US. I guess we'll have to wait for There's Something About Mary II.